


These Last Hours

by Phoenixflames12



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Mentions of canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 20:27:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20895617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenixflames12/pseuds/Phoenixflames12
Summary: In the last few hours before he leaves school forever, a grieving Charlie Dalton walks the grounds of Welton and is found and comforted by the presence of his friends





	These Last Hours

**Author's Note:**

> After a long awaited re-watch of Dead Poet's Society this morning, this came into my head and would not let me rest until it was written.

The morning after Neil’s death, he wakes to fresh snowfall.

The campus is eerily quiet in the pale, grey flecked light of early dawn, the creak of the great Oaks down by the lake muffled into snow covered silence. Their branches stand like black skeletons against the still, cold sky, haunted by the cries of long ago migrated geese, the ghostly crash of wingbeats against the glass-like water thundering through the silence.

Flecks of pink fire catch at the clouds as Charlie treads the familiar paths that he has known since he was eleven.

Ten hours.

That’s all the time he has left.

Ten hours to say goodbye, to shake the shackles of Welton off his wrists and walk, a tall, free, condemned man out of its’ gates.

A man with no prospects and a forever tarnished record that would make him the shame of his parents, society, and the world itself.

_Carpe Diem._

_Carpe Diem, _indeed!

It is over.

All of it.

Soon, very soon, this term with all of its’ hopes and possibilities, of resurrecting the Dead Poets’ Society, of the thrill of slipping out of the cubicles at night into the cave, of seeing Neil find his true calling on the stage, of watching the shy, withdrawing Todd come alive under Mr Keating’s guidance and Neil’s persistence, will all be little more than a distant dream.

The thought of that bitter sentiment sends a brittle, frozen laugh billowing from his mouth, running a frozen, shaking hand through his hair in frustration of it all.

It stops him dead in his snow drift tracks, pulling his coat away from his shoulders and letting the chill of the December air engulf him.

It slaps his face with more force than Mr Nolan’s baton against his buttocks, stinging his eyes, making him think of Todd’s broken body collapsing into his and Knox’s arms, chest heaving with incoherent sobs. Of the electric energy that had surged through him in Todd and Neil’s dorm room when they had been found by Cameron, the weight of all the anger and frustration and injustice about Neil and Keating balling themselves up into a force that found its’ only release in the throw of his fist.

‘Charlie?’

He hasn’t heard Knox, Meeks, Todd and Pitts coming up behind him.

Doesn’t feel the weight of four pairs of arms reach tentatively around his shoulders.

He doesn’t answer them.

The ghostly words that once upon a time he would have said with smart, snapping conviction hang on his tongue like a weight, utterly unutterable and completely useless.

‘_Damn it, Neil, the name is Nowanda!’_

The thought of those words catches a broken laugh from frozen lips as he turns to his friends. Their faces are pinched pink with cold, their eyes round with pathetic empathy.

Nuwanda and whatever he had wanted to become from hiding behind the effortlessly cool persona of a saxophone playing, rule breaking rebel, was dead.

Neil is dead.

Neil, with all his hopes and dreams and aspirations for what the world, what his friends could be, is dead.

‘Neil,’ he says finally, when he has found the courage to speak.

‘Neil would’ve…’

He can’t continue.

The unspoken words catch at his throat, pulling him under, the weight of them making his legs buckle, forcing him to his knees in a sudden howl of pain that obliterates the morning stillness like a gunshot.

‘Charlie! It’s… It’s all right. It’s all right, Charlie, it’s…’

Broken voices and frozen hands engulf him, holding him as they had all once tried to hold Todd, the shaking warmth of his tears finally breaking loose.

He doesn’t know how long he cries, or for how long they hold onto him, heads bent to his, fresh snow catching in their hair.

All he can feel is the cold, gaping weight that had been cut out of his heart with Neil’s death slowly begin to knit itself back together again, piece by shattered piece.

‘Is it?’

His voice does not sound like his own.

‘No,’ Meeks says finally, shifting through the snow so that he’s facing Charlie. The dark eyes that peer through fugged spectacles and framed by snow-damp curls look tired, but strong.

Strong and resolute and ready to carry on the legacy that Neil and Keating have left behind.

Everything that in this moment, Charlie is not.

‘But we need to stick together, hold it together. All of us. It’s what… It’s what Neil would’ve wanted.’ His voice wobbles a little on Neil’s name and he breaks off, glancing back to the others, who nod, Knox releasing his hold on Charlie’s midriff, Pitts’ offering a small, rare smile, Todd pressing his hand in unspoken response.

_How odd and yet how fitting it is that it should be Meeks, the little boy whom he remembers arriving at the age of eleven. The little boy with the too-big spectacles that had dwarfed his face. The little boy who had barely spoke a word for the entirety of their first year, to step into Neil’s shoes as leader of their little, ragtag group!_

Slowly, he lifts his head to them, eyes burning with unshed tears, skin stinging with scars of salt, letting the chill of the wind dry his face, bringing him slowly back to life, pushing back on his haunches, and making to stand, the chill of snow wet wool against his feet sending a shiver down his spine.

Four faces watch him anxiously, Knox gripping his arm at the elbow, Meeks, Pitts and Todd suddenly tentative, unsure whether to get too close.

‘I’m all right,’ he manages at last, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand that trembles in the cold, a shaky, broken laugh catching at his lips as he tries to give them something of his old, devil-may-care smile.

He knows that they don’t believe him.

Sees Meeks raise an eyebrow at Knox, who shrugs and wordlessly tightens his grip on Charlie’s arm and Todd look hopelessly from one to the other.

Doesn’t know if he truly believes himself.

‘We can’t stand out here all day. They’ll send out a search party if we’re not careful,’ Knox nods towards the school buildings, bathed in the slowly fading pink light of full dawn.

‘’Let them search,’ Charlie hears himself spit, knowing that any search party would find him once again back in the Headmasters’ office at the mercy of Mr Nolan’s baton and his parent’s disappointment, and realising that he doesn’t care. There is very little that they can do to him now that hasn’t been done already.

He has no time for the administration and what fate awaits him anymore.

Has no time for school, or classes, and yet as Knox throws an arm around his shoulders and Todd comes up to flank his other side with a tentative smile and Meeks leads the way, he knows that in the short time that he has left with the core members of the Dead Poets’ Society, he will endeavour to keep marching on towards whatever the future holds with all the bravery of their fallen comrade.

* * *

_ **Fin** _

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to read and review! Comments, suggestions, questions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x


End file.
